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Category: MAM

  • MMA IMPACT INDIA 2023 wraps up with a shebang for the first time ever in Delhi

    MMA IMPACT INDIA 2023 wraps up with a shebang for the first time ever in Delhi

    Mumbai:  MMA Global India successfully concluded the highly anticipated MMA IMPACT India 2023 at Taj City Centre, Gurugram. This immersive marketing conference brought together some of India’s most brilliant marketing minds. The event featured a series of engaging panel discussions involving notable figures such as MMA Global – India country head & board member Moneka Khurana; Honasa Consumer Ltd (Mamaearth, The Derma Co. & Ayuga) co-founder & chief innovations officer Ghazal Alagh; Honasa Consumer Ltd co-founder & CEO Varun Alagh; ONDC chief business officer Shireesh Joshi and other esteemed delegates, making it a resounding success in the marketing industry.

    The iconic event also witnessed the unveiling of the ONDC Playbook titled ONDC Advantage x toolkit – an MMA and GroupM initiative – GTM Guide to digitise & democratise for commerce-led growth by Ghazal Alagh and Shireesh Joshi, which offers a step-by-step approach to implementing the ONDC. This resource equips businesses with the necessary tools to position themselves at the forefront of the digital commerce revolution, driving growth and fostering innovation. Another notable session was the fireside chat featuring Varun Alagh and Moneka Khurana, discussing the selection of the right mix of sniper and bazooka techniques for businesses.

    The event also witnessed an impressive turnout of industry professionals, marketers, and stakeholders, all eager to delve into the evolving digital landscape. This event encourages attendees to rethink their execution methods, relearn how to leverage technological advancements, and rebuild their marketing organisation structures, ultimately leading to the development of Winning Marketing Organizations 2.0.

    MMA Global – India country head & board member Moneka Khurana opened the event with her welcome address and said, “We are living in a world more empowered than before and therefore we need more empowered marketers, neither looking at the glass as half full nor as half empty – that’s a full stack marketer for you. They are marketers serving aware customers in an advanced world and are well-versed with traditional and digital marketing strategies to drive performance and leverage data and technology whilst building brand and reputation with story-telling, design and cultural relevance. The only way forward in this dynamic marketing ecosystem is to take decisions across functions, take risks, and be vulnerable while staying close to the consumer. MMA globally has taken the lead in bringing cutting-edge resources in the form of White Papers, reports, and ecosystems to encourage learning and equip marketers with transformational strategies to drive growth. India alone has launched 15+ reports and White Papers in the last 18 months. That makes MMA a melting pot for large and established organisations to learn from emerging ones and vice versa.”

    MMA India board chair and L’Oréal India chairman Amit Jain in his keynote session, talked about marketing excellence, embracing the strengths of insurgents and said, “MMA is truly a diverse body, creating a culture of building marketing excellence within organisations. The theme Winning Marketing Organizations 2.0 has been inspired by a global study that MMA has done, the bottom line of which is – organisations that lead on revenue and customer acquisitions can be distinguished by the kind of investments they make in marketing capability. Thanks to AI, marketing as we know it might stand on its head over the next year. This calls for rethinking the paradigm of marketing, which is why today’s theme has got a big part in the emergence of the insurgents. We can now either rethink, relearn and rebuild to stay competitive in the emerging ecosystem”

    MMA board member and MMA Global APAC MD APAC Rohit Dadwal unveiled the Global MMA study – State of AI in Marketing and said, “AI is being used and has been used by all of us in the last 10 years, and we will only be using the majority of our work on AI going forward. MMA undertook a study about the state of AI in Marketing and Consumer experience, with the aim to help senior marketers understand the risk and governance in AI. The key insights were that first, we are at an inflexion point, second, building the business case unlocks leadership support, third, organisational and data challenges will hinder adoption and lastly, the time to think about AI-related risks is now. It is important for marketers to understand that measurement, which is an ongoing challenge in the digital world, is not going to be resolved today, but will enhance the capability of every part of the marketing organisations to be able to establish a return on investment and the measurement and data around that.”

    SenseAI Ventures managing partner Rahul Agarwalla delivered a keynote session titled ‘From Data to Dollars: Marketing Insights from AI-First Investments.’ The session provided valuable insights for marketers on leveraging the power of AI. Key takeaways included understanding the transformative potential, exploring powerful use cases, fostering company-wide adoption through talent, culture, and leadership shifts, identifying emerging trends, and addressing challenges, risks, and regulations associated with AI adoption.

    MMA India board member and Perfetti Van Melle India managing director Rajesh Ramakrishnan presented a keynote session titled ‘Picture Perfect Transformation: Lessons from Photography.’ This session emphasised the importance of transformation in a rapidly changing world and how companies must embrace it to thrive, as illustrated in his excerpt from the recently released annual report, Modern Marketing Reckoner Rajesh correlated the key elements of successful transformation with elements in photography, including composition (strategy), multiple perspectives (benchmarking), lines and curves (systems and processes), and connecting with people (engagement).

    Similarly, the representatives include Paytm Ads vice president Aditya Swaminathan addressed ‘Next Generation Marketing: Harnessing the potential of fintech platform for business growth’ and gave valuable insights on targeting capabilities, innovative ad formats and how to create a seamless commerce user journey. Another keynote session on  ‘Unlocking the Power of Commerce Ads: Transforming Brand-Consumer Connections’ by Sudarshan Sarma, Senior Director – Monetization, Flipkart gave an insightful session on the transformative role of e-commerce in advertising through contextualization and innovation.

    During the event, a masterclass titled ‘Rethinking Everything You Know About Media Quality’ was conducted by DoubleVerify head of sales India Nachiket Deole. The masterclass addressed the transformative changes that brands have experienced in recent years, including the impact of COVID-19 on media consumption habits, the rapid growth of Connected TV (CTV), and the amplification of social media discourse, providing a platform for all voices.

    After the unveiling of the ‘ONDC Advantage X toolkit – an MMA and GroupM initiative –  GTM Guide to digitise & democratise for commerce-led growth’ with Ghazal Alagh, Moneka Khurana and Shireesh Joshi, a panel discussion was held to shed light on the potential of the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) initiative and its impact on India’s digital economy. Together, the panelists shared insights and decoded the highlights from the ONDC Advantage X toolkit. The discussion revolved around how brands and sellers can leverage the ONDC Network to enhance their businesses, providing practical guidance and valuable strategies for successful implementation.

    MMA IMPACT India 2023 concluded successfully, providing a platform for marketing professionals to explore the evolving digital landscape. The event featured engaging panel discussions, enlightening keynotes, and insightful masterclasses. The launch of the ONDC Advantage X toolkit – an MMA and GroupM initiative – GTM Guide marked a significant highlight, offering businesses a roadmap to leverage the transformative potential of the ONDC. With thought-provoking sessions by industry experts and discussions on marketing excellence, embracing innovation, and redefining strategies, attendees gained valuable insights into navigating the dynamic marketing landscape. The event fostered collaboration, innovation, and growth, empowering marketers to adapt, leverage technology, and build winning marketing organisations.
     

  • ‘GotChosen’ introduces a new proprietary technology

    Mumbai: GotChosen, the social media platform that prioritises monetization for influencers, introduces its new proprietary technology that is bound to create a disruption in the industry with respect to how content is created and consumed. The proprietary technology streamlines ad monetization and processes mass payment transactions to creators. The Inclusive model allows creators of all sizes – from nano to celebrities – to earn revenue by creating content for their audience.

    The revenue centric ad technology for ads can identify how much an influencer should be paid for each ad impression that is sold in real time, along with content. The revenue is allocated to the owner of the content regardless of the device, geo, or type of content. The Artificial Intelligence led technology guarantees monetization on all creator content and supports multiple advertisement formats like display, native, video, and interstitial ads. The technology is optimised to yield an effective and sustainable monetization model to creators and provides complete revenue reports to creators.

    The new technology has also enabled GotChosen to create a highly efficient mass payment system, which processes mass payment transactions in different currencies to content creators on the platform, in more than 50 countries.

    GotChosen’s proprietary technology uses programmatic advertising, developed in-house, to sell an ad inventory from 200,000+ brands and credits 60 per cent of the ad impression earnings to the owner of the content. The technology allows the entire process, from identification stage to payment, to be completed within 300 milliseconds.

    Commenting on the new technology, GotChosen CEO & founder Oz Silva said, “We, at GotChosen, are committed to democratising the revenue earning model from social media platforms. The technology was developed keeping this commitment at the core. We believe that it is time to make changes to the model of digital content consumption. We aim to marry our technology with our experience in the market and partnership with peers in the ecosystem to create a failproof method to share large majority of the ad revenue generated on GotChosen platform with creators on board.”

    “We are also keen to ensure transparency at all stages of the process and the creators get a full report of the revenue. It is our endeavour to make sure that the right amount is reaching the creators at the right,” he further added.

    GotChosen is committed to be the pioneer of tomorrow’s trends today and create a disruptive way in how content creators and their audiences interact with brands.

  • Do’s and Don’ts for Getting a Personal Loan

    Do’s and Don’ts for Getting a Personal Loan

    MUMBAI: Personal loans enable both salaried and self-employed individuals to meet their short to medium term financial obligations without having to furnish any collateral or security. As individuals looking for a personal loan have several options to choose from, they may have a difficult time in selecting the right lender for their personal loan. The chances of availing approval for personal loans may increase or decrease depending on the loan applicants’ financial behaviour. Moreover, these actions may also end up having long-term consequences on the financial health of the prospective borrowers. Hence, it is important for prospective borrowers to understand more about personal loans before they opt for this unsecured credit instrument. Here are some do’s and don’ts for personal loan applicants as well as for existing personal loan borrowers:

    Do’s for Availing Personal Loans

    Compare the interest rates offered by various personal loan lenders

    The interest rates offered on personal loans usually start from 10.49% p.a., with some public sector banks offering lower rates of interest on their personal loan schemes. Prospective borrowers should first check the personal loan interest rates with banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFC) with whom they share a deposit, credit card or lending relationship. Then they should visit online financial marketplaces to compare the interest rates on personal loans offered by other lenders based on their credit profile. These financial marketplaces also allow loan applicants to apply for personal loan online with their partner lenders.

    Select your loan tenure after factoring your EMI affordability

    The loan tenures offered by most personal loan lenders extend up to 5 years, with some lenders also offering tenures of up to 7 years. Opting for longer loan tenures will lower the EMI amount but increase the overall interest cost while shorter repayment tenures will reduce the total interest costs but increase the EMI. Thus, personal loan applicants should use the online personal loan EMI calculator to find their optimum loan tenures and EMI based on their finances. Loan applicants should also account for their unavoidable monthly expenditures and monthly contribution towards their crucial financial goals while selecting their optimal EMIs.  

    Keep your EMI/NMI Ratio within 50-55%

    EMI/NMI ratio is the sum total of an individual’s total EMI obligations (including the EMI of their proposed personal loan) as a proportion of their net monthly income (NMI). Lenders offering personal loans usually consider this factor as an important indicator of their repayment capacity. Lenders usually prefer lending to loan applicants with total EMIs within the limit of 50-55% of their net monthly income. Those exceeding this limit have lower chances of personal loan approval. Thus, loan applicants can use the Personal Loan EMI Calculator to find out whether their EMI/NMI ratio, after factoring in the EMI of the proposed personal loan, is within the desired range. Applicants exceeding the above mentioned limit can select longer loan tenures to increase their chances of loan approval.

    Check the total cost of availing a personal loan

    Although interest rates play a vital role in deciding the overall cost of opting for a personal loan, there are other fees and charges associated with a personal loan which can inflate the overall cost. As a prospective borrower, you should be aware of the processing fees, prepayment charges and other expenses levied by lenders under their personal loan schemes and opt for the lender with the lowest total cost for availing a personal loan after factoring their interest rates, processing fees and other charges.

    Check the eligibility criteria

    Although every lender offering personal loan has their own eligibility conditions, lenders usually offer personal loans on the basis of their loan applicants’ income, credit scores, existing financial obligations, employment profile, etc. Therefore, loan applicants should check if they meet the eligibility criteria set by a particular lender before they apply for a personal loan. Failure to meet the eligibility conditions may result in loan rejection and negatively impact their credit score. Instead, loan applicants should visit online financial marketplaces, which provides loan offers to the applicants on the basis of their credit profile and loan eligibility matrix set by the individual lenders.

    Don’ts for Availing Personal Loans

    Don’t ignore your credit score

    Credit scores are a numerical indicator of an individual’s creditworthiness. Lenders use this score to determine their applicants’ repayment capacity. Applicants with lower scores may be denied loan approval or they may get loan sanction at higher interest rates. Thus, loan applicants should regularly track their credit scores by fetching their credit report and take corrective steps to improve their credit scores. Fetching their credit report will allow applicants to check for any clerical errors or incorrect information present in the report and rectify those errors. A rectified credit report will increase the loan applicant’s credit score and thereby, improve their personal loan eligibility.

    Don’t apply with multiple lenders within a short duration

    Whenever you apply for a new personal loan, the lender fetches your credit report from the credit bureaus in order to assess your creditworthiness. Credit bureaus consider such credit report requests from lenders as hard inquiries, which leads the bureau to reduce your credit score by a few points. Therefore, multiple such inquiries within a short span of time will sharply reduce your credit score, thus reducing your chances of availing personal loans.

    Loan applicants should instead visit online financial marketplaces if they want to make multiple such loan inquiries. Such credit report requests from financial marketplaces are considered as soft inquiries, which do not reduce your credit scores.

    Don’t skip EMI payments

    Lenders usually charge late payment fees if you miss your EMI repayment deadline. Although the lender might offer an extension under certain circumstances, borrowers usually have to pay the penal interest rates on failure to repay their EMI. As the repayment history of an individual receives the highest weightage while calculating their credit score, non-payment of EMIs by their due date may also end up in reducing their credit scores, which in turn would reduce their future loan and credit card eligibility. Thus, personal loan borrowers should always try to pay their EMIs by their due date.

    Don’t borrow from unrecognised lenders    

    Loan applicants should exercise caution while checking personal loan offers from multiple lenders. There are many unrecognised platforms which may promise lower interest rates or other favourable conditions on their personal loans. However, such unscrupulous lenders may steal your personal information or they may have other hidden charges which will end up ballooning your borrowing costs. Therefore, prospective borrowers should always apply for personal loans with lenders recognised by the RBI having good customer reviews and reliable lending history.

  • WebEngage onboards three new strategic hires

    WebEngage onboards three new strategic hires

    Mumbai: B2B Saas company and a leading full-stack retention operating system, WebEngage, has announced the onboarding of three strategic hires to help the company catapult into its next phase of growth. Hetarth Patel comes in as vice president – MENA & managing director – UAE; Shreya Trivedi joins as WebEngage’s first-ever chief of staff, and Apurva Chawla has been roped in as associate director – product led growth in India.

    Having recently started operations across Indonesia, the company has also announced that it has opened up more than 100 positions across departments and geographies.

    MENA region is the second-largest market for WebEngage and Patel will helm the company’s growth vision in the Middle East & North Africa region by harnessing its award-winning CDP-powered marketing automation platform and building on its commendable track record in the region.

    With a distinguished career spanning about a decade, Trivedi, will play an instrumental role in supporting the founders and executive body in achieving strategic goals. Her job will also involve enabling the scale-up of the business and optimizing productivity across the teams. She will help keep every employee glued to the mothership and its mission.

    Chawla will be responsible for a zero-to-one journey for brands that hold the potential for generating new revenue streams for WebEngage. He will enable the process of making integration, onboarding, and adoption easier for clients by standardising events, metrics, and campaigns.

    Commenting on the announcement, WebEngage CEO & co-founder Avlesh Singh said, “As we continue to ride the wave of success, Patel, Trivedi and Chawla’s appointments come at a very opportune time. WebEngage is on a mission to revolutionize retention marketing through a full-stack solution, by enabling brands to maximize the utility of data and meaningfully engage customers. The appointment of these leaders will help us with this mission and fuel the company’s growth ambitions.”

    “As a philosophy, we have always maintained discipline in our growth and kept an eye on the long haul. This is the reason why WebEngage is considered one of the most enduring companies within the B2B SaaS ecosystem. In our 11 years journey, the company has never laid off a single employee and we will never have to do so in the future. In fact, we are looking to hire more than 100 folks for over 30 open positions currently across multiple locations in India, UAE and Indonesia. The ride has just begun and we have the tickets to the front row seats for anyone who wants to join our journey of simplifying retention for the world.” he added.

    For the record, WebEngage has been growing 100 per cent YoY and intends to maintain the momentum. It has also picked up $20 million in funding this August. WebEngage has showcased unusual frugality and resilience in an 11-year journey filled with ups and downs, burning only six million dollars in capital to reach a $20 million annual revenue run rate, an enviable position to be in. Peers in SaaS spend about 3 – 5x more to get to the same scale. The company works with 600+ clients, including new-economy and internet-first businesses, and propels the digital transformation journey for enterprise clients.

  • Zupee extends its association with Momentus Digital

    Zupee extends its association with Momentus Digital

    Mumbai: Zupee, an online real-money gaming platform with a 95 per cent market share in the casual and boardgame segments, announced the renewal of their contract and the extension of their association with Momentus Digital as their digital agency partner on Thursday.

    Zupee’s product portfolio of skill-based casual and board games includes a host of socially relevant games such as ludo, snakes & ladders, trump cards, carrom, and more, with the vision to provide meaningful entertainment while bringing users moments of joy.

    Momentus Digital has been working with Zupee as their digital marketing partner to expand the brand’s reach across India by delivering strategic digital campaigns aligned with the company’s business goals.

    Throughout the association, Momentus Digital has executed some impactful campaigns for the brand through performance marketing initiatives across digital, including display partnerships, influencer marketing, DSP alliances, and programmatic platforms. With an in-depth understanding of the market, the brand cohorts have been able to get success from their end users.

    Momentus Digital CEO Aarooshi Tyagi said, “We are delighted to partner with Zupee, which has always been extremely supportive and refreshing to work with. Extending the digital association in and of itself is a compliment to us and the team. We are excited to add more value to the brand. We believe that the use of digital media in the gaming industry has huge potential to be capitalised on, and we are committed to helping Zupee with the same in the future as well.”

    Zupee VP of digital marketing Nishant Jaiswal said, “The partnership with Momentus has been helpful in driving better media buying efficiencies and optimising return on media investments by focusing on scale and funnel conversions. We have been able to test multiple programmatic platforms, DSPs, and direct publishers and enrich our digital marketing playbook. Looking forward to building further on the synergies between the two teams.”

    Momentus Digital is a unified media advertising partner that is designed to provide the full extent of audiences through native, programmatic, search, display, and gaming audiences. We specialise in a vertical where brands work with us on brand engagement or performance marketing. Our brand engagement also works along the lines of reaching the right audience through the right channel at the right time.

  • Meesho appoints Divyesh Shah as vice president of engineering

    Meesho appoints Divyesh Shah as vice president of engineering

    Mumbai: Meesho, one of India’s fastest growing internet commerce companies, has announced the appointment of Divyesh Shah as vice president, engineering. He will lead the supply, monetisation and fulfillment & experience (F&E) engineering teams at Meesho. Shah will oversee Meesho’s efforts in using technology to build solutions that will further enhance user experience on the platform.

     Shah joins Meesho with over 16 years of work experience, having worked at companies like Google and Uber in the US. He started his career at Google building containers on Linux which are now utilized by most large Linux deployments, and later went onto build TV ads and Analytics for Google Fiber.

    More recently, his teams built the product platform for Google Assistant. In between these Google stints, he also worked at Uber where his teams solved complex problem statements related to marketplace health, adtech data & measurement and vehicle solutions.

     “Shah brings a wealth of experience to our talented Tech team and we’re really pleased to have him join us. Right from our very first conversation with him we could sense his enthusiasm towards our mission statement of democratizing e-commerce for every Indian and we’re confident that his skill set & leadership will help Meesho scale newer heights in the near future,” said Meesho founder and CTO Sanjeev Barnwal.

     “After spending the last 16 years working in the US, I was keen to return home and be a part of the Indian tech ecosystem. Of all the opportunities, Meesho stood out because of the scale at which it operates and the mission statement of democratizing e-commerce for everyone in India which also translates into the opportunity to serve a large underrepresented demographic.

    I’m absolutely delighted to join one of India’s fastest growing startups and look forward to understanding the behavior and needs of a user base that stretches beyond the country’s first 50-100 million internet users,” said Shah.

    The latest appointment will strengthen Meesho’s tech leadership team as the company looks to onboard more users and increase its presence in India’s underserved markets. Earlier this year, the company announced the appointment of Debdoot Mukherjee as chief data scientist to oversee their efforts to make every pillar of the e-commerce marketplace smarter and more efficient with the use of AI.

  • Wondrlab ropes in Bhavesh Kosambia as content lead

    Wondrlab ropes in Bhavesh Kosambia as content lead

    Mumbai: Wondrlab, one of India’s leading platform-first Martech networks, has appointed Bhavesh Kosambia as its content lead. As a part of strengthening its creative leadership team, Kosambia will report to co-founder & chief creative officer Amit Akali and lead a set of key accounts and talent.

    Kosambia has been around in the advertising industry for more than two decades, most recently as group creative director at Grey. He’s handled and built national and international brands like Audi, Coke, Ferrero, Gillette, Eureka Forbes, Reliance, Zee TV, Parle, Paras, Marico, and ITC. He has won various national and international awards, such as those from Cannes, One Show, the New York Festival, Adfest, and Spikes Asia. He’s even served on numerous juries, including the grand jury for the New York Festival.

    The last few years, he’s been focusing on his skills as an ad filmmaker and director. His films Tanishq “Raksha Bandhan” and Gillette “Soldier” have been among the top popular ones in the last couple of years.

    At Wondrlab, he will use his skills as a creative leader, thinker, and ad film director. Akali explained, “I’ve been lucky to work with Kosambia in the past, both as a creative person and as a filmmaker. He’s done some of our best work as a director, and I’ve seen him work his magic as a creative team leader. He’s one of those rare people who is constantly learning and evolving. And I’m sure he’ll quickly get down to doing cutting-edge, platform-first, tech-led work.”

    He further goes on to say, “We are also clear that in-house talent is going to get all possible opportunities, especially with our in-house production set up—Kosambia has already directed a few films for us, including the recent “Karva Chauth” film for Bharat Matrimony. Most importantly, he’s someone our clients can depend on as a partner and support system to build their brands.”

    Kosambia adds, “I have always believed that any place is made by the people who work there, and my association with Wonderlab and What’s Your Problem for the last couple of years has just proved me right again. The energy, dedication, and quest for doing something different exhibited by Amit Akali, Rakesh Hinduja, and Saurabh Varma can only be experienced if you work with them. The place is currently buzzing with talented and hungry people looking for good work, as well as equally hungry clients looking for good work. Honestly speaking, I feel like an extended family that has come to feast at a table where everyone is already enjoying whatever they are supposed to do. And I am sure I too will be able to join the party.”

  • Pawan Soni joins Fuel Content India as chief business officer

    Pawan Soni joins Fuel Content India as chief business officer

    Mumbai: FCB Group India’s content production arm, Fuel Content, has announced the appointment of Pawan Soni as chief business officer. He will lead FCB Group’s content production business and develop capabilities in India to offer full-funnel content solutions to their clients.

    With this new appointment, FCB Group India has taken a step to expand its client offerings in this dynamic and ever-evolving media landscape. Soni aims to leverage his wealth of knowledge and years of expertise to drive Fuel Content’s next phase of growth and solidify FCB’s role as a partner for the client’s business growth.

    Soni, who brings with him 18 years of management experience to the role, will be reporting to FCB India & Fuel Content CEO Debarpita Banerjee. He is a seasoned professional with a depth of experience across content and marketing as well, most recently at his own content agency, ThumbThamba Media, where he works with brand owners and agencies to create digital content while helping brands build their content strategies to solve business problems.

    He was previously head of content and marketing verticals for Disney’s Fox portfolio in India, where he managed brands like National Geographic and Fox Life. Before joining National Geographic, he was with JWT (now Wunderman Thompson) and worked on GSK’s consumer healthcare portfolio with brands like Horlicks & Iodex. The move underlines FCB Group India’s effort to offer their clients best-in-class content solutions across myriad production formats and platforms.

    Speaking on the appointment, Banerjee said, “I have known Soni for more than a decade and have worked with him closely in different roles across different organisations. I have always been a fan of his ability to unknot any situation and find a shining solution. As a force, he always moves forward, and as Fuel expands its offerings and expertise to our clients and moves into its next phase of operations, I am confident that Soni will be able to steer this unit to new and exciting heights.”

    On the appointment, Soni said, “This is an amazing opportunity, and I am excited to work alongside super talented folks at FCB Group India to produce even more creative stories and engaging content of the highest quality. I believe that great production is where creativity and curiosity go hand in hand with problem-solving, which allows us to create customised solutions every time for our clients’ storytelling needs. I’m looking forward to leading and growing Fuel Content into a modern production company that fuses agility, creativity, and technology to produce highly engaging yet effective work. Our ambition is to build a full-service production company that provides world-class production support, standout creative guidance, and a range of innovative solutions for our clients to produce insightful content that meaningfully connects with audiences in authentic and culturally relevant ways.”

    For the record, Fuel Content integrates key FCB tools like Brand Bedrock and aligns core brand strategy with content strategy to create “never-finished” content across platforms in India. It believes in a collaborative content creation approach; hence, it works closely with a network of individual content creators and different digital platforms to optimise content visibility and management for its clients.

  • TCS extends sponsorship of Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon

    TCS extends sponsorship of Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon

    Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has announced that it will continue to sponsor the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon (SCSM) corporate challenge for another four years, until 2026. This collaboration also marks the start of TCS’ four-year association as the SCSM’s official mobile app partner beginning in 2022, with the goal of creating truly immersive and community-focused digital race experiences for runners and fans.

    SCSM is set to return to the streets of Singapore from 2 to 4 December, and be the centre of community engagement to end the year on a high and healthy note. The partnership is in line with TCS’ global focus on encouraging healthy lifestyles and community bonding through sports.

    As the official mobile app partner for SCSM 2022, TCS has created an experience that goes beyond the essentials and provides better insights and information about the marathon for the 50,000 participants who are expected at the two-day event. It also streamlines the entire marathon experience for active and passive participants through a single, digitally integrated platform with high functionality and an excellent user experience. Runners can look forward to functions and conveniences such as booking transportation to the marathon grounds, race day weather details, SOS for emergencies, and checking on their run’s progress. The fully immersive race experience, incorporating the runners’ pre-, race-day, and post-race journeys, is designed to cheer every runner.

    The app also features an AR-powered virtual experience, where runners can make use of the AR medal filters, themed frames for photos, and video creation functionalities to share their racing experiences and victories almost instantly. The app aims to create a “running club” experience by allowing participants to connect with other runners virtually, even when they are not at the same location.

    Additionally, TCS is also the sponsor of SCSM’s corporate challenge. TCS sees sports as an excellent way for coworkers to bond and integrate wellness into organisational DNA. TCS’ title sponsorship of the SCSM corporate challenge 2022 creates a unique opportunity for large corporations and small and medium enterprises to collaborate and come together even as they compete for the top spot in an international marathon setting.

    The corporate challenge comprises three categories: the total distance covered by corporate finishers, further divided into four tiers based on the number of runners registered by a company; the top corporate male and female from each race category.

    “Sports, especially community events like marathons, have always played an integral role in enhancing society’s mental and physical well-being. TCS bolsters running communities globally as they transform lives, one sprint at a time,” said TCS Asia Pacific president Girish Ramachandran. “The driving force for us at TCS has always been our community and creating products that allow communities to flourish and push the envelope on innovation, health, and wellness. We are glad to partner with the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon over the next four years to create and upgrade tools like the race app that make the marathon experience integrated and accessible for participants and spectators alike.”

    The IRONMAN Group, Singapore general manager Santoz Kumar said, “TCS is synonymous with the world’s greatest marathons. The 2022 Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon marks the seventh year of collaboration with TCS, and their long-standing involvement is testament to the strength and iconic nature of the international event. Their support has been invaluable as we strive to enhance the race experience for participants. This year is no exception, and the TCS-designed SCSM2022 mobile application will play an integral role for our participants and their supporters, as it features essential tools such as live runner tracking, race-day information, and much more.”

    Marathons have been an intrinsic part of Singaporean culture for decades, with the community joining hands every December to celebrate health, fitness, and strength at the SCSM. TCS encourages healthier living globally as a partner and sponsor at some of the largest marathons in the world. As the official mobile app partner and title sponsor of the SCSM corporate challenge, TCS encourages running communities and promotes marathon participation to build healthier, stronger, and more active communities.

  • Tata Tele to expand its cloud communication suite Smartflo with WhatsApp Business Platform

    Tata Tele to expand its cloud communication suite Smartflo with WhatsApp Business Platform

    Mumbai: Connectivity and communication solutions for businesses Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) has announced the strategic integration of WhatsApp Business Platform into its cloud communication suite, Smartflo. This is an advanced move in the digital era to offer an enhanced business communication experience, thus accelerating user engagement, boosting CX, and ensuring impactful customer interactions.

    WhatsApp Business Platform is a simple and trusted solution for businesses to better manage customer discussions and inquiries around the world. Its superior UX, further enhances business communications, enabling seamless, rich, and impactful interactions in the way customers want to engage in today’s business ecosystem.

    Tata Tele Business Services, in its endeavour to transform digital experiences with technology, brings to the table in-depth knowledge of enterprise customer needs and requirements, as well as trust and service assurance. This integration will assist businesses in mapping customer operational needs across multiple channels, while also improving customer experience through unified hyper-personalised interactions and multi-touch attributions.

    Sharing his views on the enhanced cloud communication suite, Tata Teleservices Ltd SVP & head of product, marketing, and commercial Vishal Rally said, “We are excited to offer WhatsApp Business Platform through our Smartflo business suite, thereby, allowing businesses to adapt to new challenges and provide exceptional assistance to their customers on the messaging platform. Customers today expect communication to be efficient, simple, and genuine, which is enabled by WhatsApp Business. It connects our customers to their target audiences in the way they like to be assisted. As a WhatsApp Business solution provider, we at TTBS guarantee a superior user experience based on trust to our valued customers.”

    “We are excited that WhatsApp Business Platform is being leveraged for customer engagement by Tata Tele Business Services for its (CPaaS) suite,” he added.

    Businesses across sectors use the WhatsApp Business Platform to build a variety of customised, scaled solutions. It helps advance customer convenience and enable richer customer engagement. We look forward to continuing to build partnerships with businesses to help them unlock avenues of access to new audience cohorts who use WhatsApp extensively every day,” added WhatsApp India director of business messaging Ravi Garg.

    Smartflo, in collaboration with WhatsApp Business Platform, offers an integrated omnichannel solution experience that incorporates various channels and methods of connecting with and integrating customers. It unifies the customer experience (CX) across different channels such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and phone calls, as a single-point system to optimise the collective interaction experience.

    Smartflo makes business communication easy and rich, with a host of features such as single customer view, workflow automation, AI-enabled chatbots, chat interfaces, advanced analytics, hyper-personalisation, one-click integration, and an easy-to-integrate API platform.

    Counted among the country’s leaders in smart digital solutions, Tata Tele Business Services, not only provides the digital highways on which companies, big and small, run their businesses but also acts as the technology catalyst for their growth by offering a comprehensive portfolio of digital solutions in the domain of security, collaboration, marketing, the cloud, and SaaS.

    Smartflo, SmartOffice, SD-WAN iFLX, Microsoft 365, Google Workplace, Zoom Communications, EZ Cloud Connect, Customer Experience Platform for Businesses, Ultra-Lola, and Smart Internet leased line are among the company’s enterprise-grade solutions.